A follow up to Duane’s post this morning (see below) on the Union-Tribune’s endorsement of Kevin Faulconer … I wanted to note that the joint endorsement of Luis Acle for the other open city council seat, as well as the U-T’s support last month of Jerry Sanders in the mayoral election, puts the paper in the 100% column for Republican candidates for the threeSD city vacancies.

So what?, you may ask. A Republican town, a Republican newspaper, right?

Don’t be so sure. A historical look at the U-T’s ballot recommendations over the last several years shows a nearly dead heat between Ds and Rs endorsed for San Diego City Council seats. You can look it up.

The paper traditionally goes across the board GOP at the federal level, then it throws in a Democrat or two for good measure in state legislative contests (Kehoe, Vargas most recently) and by the time you get local it’s a completely… Read More

A January 10 San Diego City Council Special Election will determine whether reformers or machine types control the council. The reformer is businessman Kevin Faulconer (disclosure: he is a Coronado Communications client) and the machine type is Bustamonte aide Lorena Gonzalez. Today’s Union Tribune editorial:

“Faulconer is a public relations executive who has pledged to support most elements of Sanders’ recovery plan, including a pay freeze for non-public safety workers, increases in worker contributions to the retirement system and contracting out of more municipal services. And, like Sanders, he rejects any tax hike to pay for the oversized pensions of city workers.

Faulconer’s opponent, Lorena Gonzalez, is backed by labor unions that oppose the mayor’s program. An attorney who works for Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, Gonzalez is bright and articulate. But we fear she would be a consistent vote to stymie San Diego’s financial recovery effort, which is precisely why she has the backing of organized labor. She will not commit to support any aspect of Sanders’ agenda and even refused to respond to his questionnaire probing… Read More

Arnold Schwarzenegger made a very poor decision when he hired Susan Kennedy to be his Chief of Staff. He did so knowing full well that her leadership role in the administration of recalled Governor Gray Davis (Kennedy is pictured, to the right, with Governor Schwarzenegger in the background), as well as her extremely partisan credentials (former Executive Director of the State Democrat Party and the California Abortion Rights Action League, as well as time spent as a senior aide to Democrat U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein) would not sit well with grassroots Republican activists and donors throughout the state. I am not saying that a less-partisan Democrat would have been more readily accepted, but with this pick, the Governor reached for someone with the most patisan resume of Democrat activism possible. Perhaps the Governor felt that everyone would simply understand that he still runs state government, and not to be concerned. This… Read More

In Orange County, there are three major ‘Republican”donor’ organizations, the Lincoln Club, the Family Action PAC, and the New Majority. It is the former which has a decades-old rich tradition here in the County, and their support for a candidate carries a lot of gravitas. The club has weighed into the Special Election battle to replace now-Congressman John Campbell, who retired from the 35th State Senate seat when he was sworn into the House of Representatives earlier this month. The two candidates are businesswoman Diane Harkey, who is a member of the Dana Point City Council, and Assembly Tom Harman, whose primary source of notariety comes from having been elected to the Assembly in the year 2000 when the since-declared-unconstitutional "open primary" allowed him to capture the Republican nomination with the help of Democrat voters.

In endorsing Harkey, the Lincoln Club’s President, Rich Wagner (a great guy and a super Republican) really took off of the gloves in his assessment of… Read More

At o’dark thirty, when I was compiling news stories, for some reason I couldn’t get onto the Sacramento Bee website. There is an article and two columns there that I would have put on the main page (I won’t bother since 2/3 of FR readers have read that page already. Though i will include both of the columns tomorrow. Anyways, here are the three links that should have been on the main site this morning:

DAN WALTERS COLUMN: Governor miscalculated, fumbled as he declared his war. Dan is penning a ten-column series critical of the Governor’s performance.

DAN WEINTRAUB COLUMN: If Arnold could just get ‘er done, he’d be fine.

If you really want to get angry, you can read about the latest chapter in big-government social engineering: Solar plan resurrected by PUC.… Read More

The 38th Assembly District takes in huge stretches of Los Angeles County before going into Simi Valley. The stretch includes Sunland-Tujunga, Santa Clarita, Valencia and parts of the San Fernando Valley. Republican registration is at 43% several points higher than the Democrats. In other words very safe GOP District. The GOP primary winner is the winner of this seat.

Liberal Republican Keith Richman is term limited and running statewide.

The race features two Republicans.

Cameron Smyth is the mayor of Santa Clarita and has the endorsements of the Runners, Tom McClintock and almost every politico in the district. He has raised decent money and is conservative enough not to draw an ideological opponent. Smyth is a former staffer for the late Sen. Pete Knight.

So far only one opponent has surfaced. Mary Barrientos has raised very little money—Like really very little. She does sport the endorsement of LA County Sheriff Lee Baca. But he endorsed Smyth as well. She has somecontacts in the San Gabriel Valley- Which is not in this district!

Done Deal. Smyth to Sacramento.… Read More

There is no commentary today, as I am out of town enjoying some R & R. However, I encourage you to read this weeks past Commentaries here, and there are great new entries on the FlashReport weblog here. BE PREPARED TO TAKE A VACATION – WE ARE! So that you start to prepare in advance, the FlashReport website will be ‘on vacation for the holidays’ – our last day of publication for 2005 will be on December 24. The site will return on Tuesday, January 3 (that Monday, January 1, is the observed work holiday for NY, which falls on a weekend). During this time, some of the FR bloggers may continue to post, but the main news page not be updated.

We will still publish all of this coming week.

Jon

PS: Please sent all comments and input to me here.… Read More

I think today may be the ‘slowest’ news day in terms of reporting California political news since the inception of the online version of the FlashReport. I suspect we will be seeing more of these kinds of spare-story days as we get into the holidays. Political reporters and columnists put in a lot of time during this year’s special election, so it makes sense that they would be taking more time off – and this is on top of the fact that California’s politicians are also enjoying the holiday season.

Don’t get me wrong, there is plenty of political news going on in the country (especially out of the Congress) — but the focus of this website is on California political news.

Today I will take an opportunity to draw your attention to some of the recent posts on the FlashReport Weblog. Of course, if you missed any of my daily commentaires, you can click here to review them all by time, and catch up on my attempts a being a cub-reporter/columnist.

* Last week the California Republican Party Board of Directors met with Governor Schwarzenegger to,… Read More